“You’re wrong,” Cal said.
I opened my mouth to argue, but Cal cut me off before I could get it out.
“You’re very pretty.”
I shut my jaw with a click, my cheeks instantly going hot. I looked down at my shoes, clearing my throat. “Look, why don’t you make yourself useful and go get us a couple of sandwiches, huh?” I asked.
“You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”
“I have work to do, and I can’t do it when you’re all hovery.” I snuck a look up at him through my bangs. His eyes were laughing at me-I could feel it.
“What kind of sandwich you want?” he asked.
“Salami.”
Cal grinned, the laugh transferring to his lips. “I thought you hated salami.”
“In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a big fat liar.”
The grin widened. “Yeah, you are. Alright, I’ll be right back.”
I watched him walk away, fanning my cheeks as soon as his back was turned.
Work.
Right. I had lots of work to do.
I hit spell-check, loaded my column into an email for Felix, and had just hit the send button when a new window popped up.
Hey, Bender.
That familiar flip hit my stomach. Man in Black.
Hey.
Missed you last night.
I scrunched my nose up. Right. Last night.
Yeah, sorry about that. Something came up.
There was a pause. Then, No problem. You okay?
I took a deep breath.
Kinda.
Tell me.
I wondered how two simple little words could convey such concern. But they did. I suddenly felt the entire weight of the last few days crushing down on my shoulders and realized I was dying to unburden it on someone. So I did, spilling everything that had happened in the past two days, from that first weird phone message to the break-in last night and my tenuous position here at the Informer ever since Miss Jugs walked in. When I finally finished, I had paragraphs of text filling up my little IM window. I hit send and sat back, watching the cursor blink, waiting for his reaction.
Wow.
No kidding.
You okay?
My first reaction was to say yes. But somehow my fingers typed the word No instead. I’m scared. Which, as I stared at the words on the screen, was true. I know, I know, I’d played macho for Felix, because, frankly the idea of losing all the contacts I’d made in the last three years since I started here scared me even worse. But that didn’t mean that having someone break into my home hadn’t shattered my illusion of safety and security into a million little pieces.
You think maybe you should go to the police? he asked.
I shook my head at the screen. No. I can’t lose my informants. No police.
You sure?
I have Cal.
There was a pause. Then, The bodyguard?
I nodded at the empty room. He’s good.
I thought about the way he’d searched our condo last night, gun drawn. The way he made me ride around in his tank, shadowed me like a puppy everywhere I went. There was no way anyone was going to get the jump on me with Cal around.
I trust him, I typed.
Again with the pause. Then I do, too.
Thanks.
Be careful, Bender.
I will.
We on for tonight?
I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Be good, he typed.
Bye.
And then he signed off.
I stared at the little “offline” icon blinking back at me. I’m not sure how long I sat there feeling inexplicably lonely, but I was roused from my thoughts by a sandwich falling onto my desk.
I looked up to find Cal, a Coke in hand.
“Salami on sourdough.” He handed me the soda. “And a Coke.”
“Thanks.”
Cal pulled a chair to my desk and straddled it backwards, digging into his own sandwich. Something with lots of veggies on whole wheat. Probably lots healthier than my salami with extra mayo. Probably a lot less tasty, too.
“You finish your column?” Cal asked around a bite.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Good. Now what?”
“Now,” I said, popping a pickle into my mouth, “we go see Pines.”
Chapter Ten
The Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles is the largest correctional facility in the world, housing over five thousand inmates at any given time. Located near the courthouse, its main inhabitants are those awaiting or appealing trial. A big, concrete building with a double layer of chain-link fencing surrounding the grounds, it was nothing special to look at.
Cal parked his truck in the visitor’s lot and cut the engine.
I looked up at the gray building. “Look, I really think I should go in alone this time,” I said.
Cal froze, his hand on the door handle. “No way.”
“It’s a prison. Nothing’s going to happen to me in there. I’ll be perfectly safe. Besides, I just think Pines might talk more readily to me.”
“And why is that?”
“Besides the fact that you look like The Rock and Hulk Hogan’s love child?”
He shot me a look.
“Because you suck at this whole lying thing. And if I’m going to get an exclusive, let alone information about Jake Mullins from this guy, I’m gonna need to bend the truth. A lot.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, chewing the inside of his cheek as he contemplated this. His gaze went up to the gray building. Then back to me. Then narrowed even further.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“But be careful.”
I nodded. “Scout’s honor,” I promised, hopping out of the car and making my way inside. I felt Cal’s eyes on my back the entire way up to the door. To be honest, it was kind of reassuring.
If the exterior of the building was uninspired, the interior didn’t offer much more in the way of aesthetics. Dirty beige walls, dirty beige floors, gunmetal gray desk where I had to show my ID and be checked into the visitor’s system. Then a guy who looked like he could just as easily be on the locked-down side of the prison bars instructed me to empty my pockets and turn my purse inside out. After ascertaining that I didn’t have any files baked into cakes with me, and after making me remove my shoelaces (the ultimate weapon), he let me into the visiting room, which consisted of two rows of tiny little cubicles with telephones on each side, between a layer of bulletproof glass.
I sat down at the station the guard indicated on the end of the first row. The glass was smudged with something I did not even want to speculate about. Instead, I clasped my hands in front of me, trying hard not to touch anything.
I waited, listing to the muffled sounds of the other conversations in the room. A man telling his brother that Mom was not sending any more gum unless he took his GED course seriously. A woman telling a prisoner that if he didn’t start writing every weekend, she was gonna start seeing Joaquin, and there ain’t nothing he could do about it.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a figure in an orange jumpsuit approached my window. Hunched over, shuffling, gray skin, pronounced wrinkles, three days past needing a good shave.
Pines.
He sat down slowly, then gave me a long look as if trying to decide if he should know me, before picking up the telephone extension on his side of the glass.